The benefits to be obtained from a “smart home” ecosystem are many and compelling, and may include the ability to remotely control home appliances, devices, environmental conditions, and fixtures, from across a room or from anywhere in the world; to monitor conditions in and around the home in real time, remotely and/or automatically; and to automate, coordinate, and schedule the functions of potentially every device and system in the home. A significant obstacle to the wider enjoyment of these benefits relates to the potentially disproportionate cost and difficulty of installation. Smart home devices must be sited, mounted, configured, provided with power, connected to communications, and made to interact correctly with the huge diversity of devices that may be present in the existing home ecosystem. Installation of a smart home system may require permits from building safety or other authorities, permission from landlords, employment of licensed contractors and/or tradespersons, and alterations of the physical premises that will have to be repaired if installed devices are removed or relocated. Further, devices that are inconvenient to install give up a significant potential benefit, which is the flexibility to move devices as desired, carry devices for temporary use at other locations such as hotel rooms, and remove and reuse devices in case of changing residences. It is therefore highly desirable to provide smart home systems and devices that can be installed and operated with little, and preferably no, alteration of the existing premises, and that operate reliably without frequent maintenance or battery replacement.
A recurring “pain point” for both users and providers relates to the need for smart home systems and devices to have access to electric power. Accessing line power is often impracticable because the location where a device is needed may not be near any receptacles, potentially making it necessary to obtain permits, enlist the assistance of a licensed electrician, and install additional wiring. Even where receptacles are present, installation of line-powered smart home devices in desired locations may require routing power cords in undesirable, unsightly, or unsafe ways. Outdoor locations are particularly problematic given the undesirability of exposing electric wiring to the elements. One alternative is battery power, but this too has its drawbacks: batteries run down and must be replaced or recharged, users must remember and take the trouble to do so, and batteries are bulky and heavy in direct proportion to their capacity. These limitations are particularly acute in the context of smart home devices and systems, where user convenience is a priority, and home security may be affected if devices go offline due to unnoticed battery failure.
A further challenge relates to the problem of reconciling the need for reliable signal transmission with the limitations posed by considerations of wireless range, power requirements, and signal degradation due to the physical surroundings and layout, interference from other devices and power lines, and other causes. In general, of the existing wireless communication technologies available for home automation use, those that are more effective for conserving power are also correspondingly limited in range and bandwidth. Currently, no wireless communication technology exists capable of providing both adequate range and bandwidth for home automation functions such as video transmission, and also sufficiently low power consumption to enable normal usage profiles with sufficiently long battery life for consumer acceptance.
A smart home feature of considerable importance is the ability to support remote video monitoring, where a video input device such as, for example, a device incorporating a video camera, is placed in a location of interest and configured to relay video to a device convenient for monitoring by a user, such as, for example, a smart phone or tablet computer. In various implementations video may be relayed to a user's device via a hard-wired connection, or wirelessly, or via the internet or a cellular network, or over a local area network, or by any of a variety of known modalities. However, for incorporation into a smart home system, it is desirable for a video device to be installable and removable without a need for physical wiring or connections, for all of the reasons already described. Therefore, a smart home camera or video unit should preferably be capable of operating without access to line power or other external power sources, which means that it should preferably be powered in whole or part by battery or other power source capable of being incorporated into the unit itself; and it should not require a hard-wired data connection, which means that the video must be transmitted wirelessly. However, transmission of video at adequate resolution and frame rates is quite demanding in terms of bandwidth, which raises a heretofore unsolved dilemma: wireless transmission with high enough bandwidth for video, over the distances typically of interest for smart home systems, has required the use of protocols such as, for example, Wi-Fi, whose power requirements make them infeasible for continuous battery powered operation over any time frame consistent with the needs of a smart home system.
Thus there is a need for methods, devices, and systems capable of providing reliable video monitoring, and other smart home automation functionality entailing relatively high power and/or bandwidth requirements, in user-installable self-contained components avoiding hard-wired power or data connections, disruption of existing systems, permanent alteration of physical premises, and frequent device maintenance and/or battery replacement.